Veronika is so close to crawling, but her arms still aren’t quite strong enough yet to propel forward. You can build those arm muscles by placing a bolster under your baby’s belly; think of this as 8 month old tummy time!

I rolled up a beach towel tightly and positioned her with arms over it and legs behind.

Now lift your baby’s legs. The weight will transfer to their arms, and hopefully he or she will “walk” the hands forward.

Veronika was delighted! Mom, she seemed to say, I’m doing it!

You can roll baby forwards a little ways – just make sure you are on a smooth surface, and not a carpet.

After I let go of her legs, I let Veronika hang out this way for a while. She kicked her feet, and shifted her torso side to side to check out the towel, so she was still getting in quite a little workout.

We have little American flags for Travis and Veronika to wave at tomorrow’s Fourth of July parade, but with a roll of burlap in our craft bin, we thought it would be fun to bring homemade ones along as well.

Cut burlap into little flags; these can be square, rectangular, or triangles, whatever your little crafters would like!

I set out red, white, and blue paints, and Travis jumped right in.

First he smeared lots of blue over his flag, but then remembered to include the other two colors from Old Glory as well. By the end, his flag was a pretty mix. Meanwhile, I made a sort of reverse-color American flag for him.

Once the paint dries, hot glue onto dowels. You can leave the dowels plain, but we decided to paint those blue as well!

Travis checked out the crafts in his July issue of Highlights just in time for the Fourth of July, with these suggested fun flowers; they make the perfect centerpiece at any picnic table or backyard barbecue or pool party for the holiday! Make as many or as few as your little crafters have patience for.

For each flower, cut out a small circle, a medium flower or star shape, and a large star shape from cardstock in red, white and blue. We traced cookie cutters, but feel free to free-hand these!

I challenged Travis to layer our flowers so each contained all three colors, no repeats. He liked this step best!

Poke a hole through the cardstock. This step was a touch tricky; a pin worked best to pierce the thick paper but it made a very tiny hole. We carefully threaded a green pipe cleaner through and added a clear pony bead at the end. Wrap the pipe cleaner around the bead to seal.